Theodore Roosevelt: An AutobiographyRoosevelt, Theodore
History
Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
Roosevelt, Theodore
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919
told that when prudence and forethought are carried to the point of cold
selfishness and self-indulgence, the race is bound to disappear. Taking
into account the women who for good reasons do not marry, or who when
married are childless or are able to have but one or two children, it is
evident that the married woman able to have children must on an average
have four or the race will not perpetuate itself. This is the mere
statement of a self-evident truth. Yet foolish and self-indulgent
people often resent this statement as if it were in some way possible
by denunciation to reverse the facts of nature; and, on the other hand,
improvident and shiftless people, inconsiderate and brutal people, treat
the statement as if it justified heads of families in having enormous
numbers of badly nourished, badly brought up, and badly cared for
children for whom they make no effort to provide. A man must think
well before he marries. He must be a tender and considerate husband and
realize that there is no other human being to whom he owes so much of
love and regard and consideration as he does to the woman who with pain
bears and with labor rears the children that are his. No words can paint
the scorn and contempt which must be felt by all right-thinking men, not
only for the brutal husband, but for the husband who fails to show full
loyalty and consideration to his wife. Moreover, he must work, he must
do his part in the world. On the other hand, the woman must realize that
she has no more right to shirk the business of wifehood and motherhood
than the man has to shirk his business as breadwinner for the household.
Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to
enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be
paid as highly. Yet normally for the man and the woman whose welfare
is more important than the welfare of any other human beings, the woman
must remain the housemother, the homekeeper, and the man must remain the
breadwinner, the provider for the wife who bears his children and for
the children she brings into the world. No other work is as valuable or
as exacting for either man or woman; it must always, in every healthy
society, be for both man and woman the prime work, the most important
work; normally all other work is of secondary importance, and must
come as an addition to, not a substitute for, this primary work. The
partnership should be one of equal rights, one of love, of self-respect,
and unselfishness, above all a partnership for the performance of the
most vitally important of all duties. The performance of duty, and not
an indulgence in vapid ease and vapid pleasure, is all that makes life
worth while.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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